Cheteshwar Pujara, the experienced Test batsman from India, recently opened up about his omission from the red-ball series against the West Indies. He shared his perspective, stating that he recognized the need to reaffirm his capabilities to truly establish his presence at the International level.
During his tenure with Sussex in county cricket, Cheteshwar Pujara revealed his thoughts over the past few months following his challenging performance in the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) final. After being excluded from the West Indies Test series, he proceeded on a county cricket adventure in England with the objective of recovering his form.
“There have been ups and downs in the last few years and it tests you as a player because having played more than 90 Test matches when I got dropped, I still had to prove myself, I still had to prove that I belonged there. It’s a different type of challenge. Sometimes you do get frustrated, even if you have to prove yourself after 90 Tests and five-six thousand, whatever number of runs I had scored, it’s not easy,” Pujara told ‘The Final Word’ podcast.
“Sometimes it plays around with your ego. Having been successful at the international level for so many years, there are still doubts – are you good enough? And if you have to prove yourself again and again, [you wonder] whether it is worth it,” he further added.
I still have a lot to contribute to the Indian cricket team: Cheteshwar Pujara
Pujara conveyed his belief that he still holds much to offer to the national squad. To substantiate this, he pointed out a compelling statistic: whenever he has achieved a score exceeding 70 runs, India’s victory rate stands impressively at 80 percent.
“I keep telling myself that I know I belong there. I know that the kind of contributions I have made to Indian cricket, I still have a lot to contribute. I was given an interesting stat some time ago where I was told that whenever I have scored more than 70 or 80 runs for the Indian team, it is about 80% of the times India have gone on to win… or we haven’t lost that particular Test match. So, I know if I score runs for the Indian team, most times we are on the winning side,” Pujara further elaborated.
